I've been in this situation a few times, you've done the right thing to keep the wreck, if you let the insurers take it away the only way you will get it back in a hurry is to pay the recovery and storage costs yourself (remember it's still yours until you sign an agreement and you can do what you like with it) and claim them back from the 3rd party.
In all 3 of my cases they agreed cash ilo repair, in general you will get something like half the market value out of them quite easily anything beyond that and they start talking about it not being economical to repair due to the value of the wreck.
Another trick to gee them up is to hire a replacement car, When my Landrover was rear ended Direct line (the third parties insurer) was playing all sorts of games ( won't pay out without an assessors report but they won't actually send an assessor to a claim less than £1000 etc) in the end my wife (an ex underwriter) threatened that we were going to hire a defender at the best part of £300 per day until they settled, cheque arrived the next day.
Also best to avoid the claims handling services they were useless, didn't have a clue what they were talking about and missus told them so! they were pretty much claiming we had to go with whatever the third party's insurers said, she sorted out what they had been messing around with for weeks in a couple of days.
Now the assessor has seen it there is nothing to stop you striping it down and cleaning parts up ready for the repair.
In all 3 of my cases they agreed cash ilo repair, in general you will get something like half the market value out of them quite easily anything beyond that and they start talking about it not being economical to repair due to the value of the wreck.
Another trick to gee them up is to hire a replacement car, When my Landrover was rear ended Direct line (the third parties insurer) was playing all sorts of games ( won't pay out without an assessors report but they won't actually send an assessor to a claim less than £1000 etc) in the end my wife (an ex underwriter) threatened that we were going to hire a defender at the best part of £300 per day until they settled, cheque arrived the next day.
Also best to avoid the claims handling services they were useless, didn't have a clue what they were talking about and missus told them so! they were pretty much claiming we had to go with whatever the third party's insurers said, she sorted out what they had been messing around with for weeks in a couple of days.
Now the assessor has seen it there is nothing to stop you striping it down and cleaning parts up ready for the repair.